Housing Roulette was an absolute trash idea.

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Originally Posted by Renalt

There have been people who have been playing years who just finally got a house and will say the system is horrid.

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*shrug* there are myriads of people who complained the old system was bad too. There isn’t a perfect solution and there will be always those left unhappy with how things are done.

The lottery system is a very Japanese solution, they do this sort of thing constantly for things that are in high demand but have limited supply. I remember when PS5 support was announced, Yoshi-P mentioned on the same Live Letter that he didn't have a PS5 yet. The ongoing supply issues the console had meant that every retailer was only selling their PS5 stock via lottery, and he hadn't gotten picked yet.

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

*shrug* there are myriads of people who complained the old system was bad too. There isn’t a perfect solution and there will be always those left unhappy with how things are done.

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My view is that the old system was toxic. People would spend hours on end in front of a placard hoping it'd miraculously pop. And constantly fight against easily ten other people botting and clicking on the placard to see if it worked. People would legit spend the night camping the place.

What we have now really isn't perfect. And it may seem unfair. But it's far fairer imo than whatever we had before. Because that was just masochism incarnate. This? This is a raffle. The unfortunate thing about it is the supply versus the demand.

I don't think it's simply a Japanese solution. I mean, sure, this practice may be a lot more welcome in Japan and all that, not saying it isn't o: I don't know enough to say otherwise anyway. But what I mean is that back then? When we had that really unhealthy system? THIS is what people asked for. A Lottery system. For better and for worse. And I mean it, people HERE, in THESE forums, the EN General Discussion chats, did ask for this. Myself among them.

I don't blame this system. Not in its entirety. Just that while it's better than what we had before, it still is stunted by one simple issue: supply.

And unfortunately, the way the game is designed and the way servers work mean supply isn't something that will grow overnight.

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

My view is that the old system was toxic. People would spend hours on end in front of a placard hoping it'd miraculously pop. And constantly fight against easily ten other people botting and clicking on the placard to see if it worked. People would legit spend the night camping the place.

What we have now really isn't perfect. And it may seem unfair. But it's far fairer imo than whatever we had before. Because that was just masochism incarnate. This? This is a raffle. The unfortunate thing about it is the supply versus the demand.

I don't think it's simply a Japanese solution. I mean, sure, this practice may be a lot more welcome in Japan and all that, not saying it isn't o: I don't know enough to say otherwise anyway. But what I mean is that back then? When we had that really unhealthy system? THIS is what people asked for. A Lottery system. For better and for worse. And I mean it, people HERE, in THESE forums, the EN General Discussion chats, did ask for this. Myself among them.

I don't blame this system. Not in its entirety. Just that while it's better than what we had before, it still is stunted by one simple issue: supply.

And unfortunately, the way the game is designed and the way servers work mean supply isn't something that will grow overnight.

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It’s not simply a JP solution, it’s just how they deal with a lot of their problems. The big difference is that the PS5 is hardware, and the housing wards technically aren’t (although they do exist on a server)

I think another issue that goes hand in hand with the current system is the developers thoughts on housing itself. They havnt outright said it, but it’s not hard to deduce that they really arnt fans of private housing at all. It seems clear to me that their interpretation is that housing in their eyes is to be used as social hubs for the free companies and they are really hesitant to allow people to go buck wild with private housing.

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Originally Posted by MintberriCrunch

Square's solution to the bot problem being "lets just make it randomm!!xD" has to be the absolute laziest solution to a problem I've ever seen in a game.

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It wasn't Square's solution, it was the playerbase's. Players demanded a lottery system for years, and they got exactly what they asked for.

The lottery system was never going to solve a supply issue, it just makes it fair for everyone who wants to bid.

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

My view is that the old system was toxic. People would spend hours on end in front of a placard hoping it'd miraculously pop. And constantly fight against easily ten other people botting and clicking on the placard to see if it worked. People would legit spend the night camping the place.

What we have now really isn't perfect. And it may seem unfair. But it's far fairer imo than whatever we had before. Because that was just masochism incarnate. This? This is a raffle. The unfortunate thing about it is the supply versus the demand.

I don't think it's simply a Japanese solution. I mean, sure, this practice may be a lot more welcome in Japan and all that, not saying it isn't o: I don't know enough to say otherwise anyway. But what I mean is that back then? When we had that really unhealthy system? THIS is what people asked for. A Lottery system. For better and for worse. And I mean it, people HERE, in THESE forums, the EN General Discussion chats, did ask for this. Myself among them.

I don't blame this system. Not in its entirety. Just that while it's better than what we had before, it still is stunted by one simple issue: supply.

And unfortunately, the way the game is designed and the way servers work mean supply isn't something that will grow overnight.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

It wasn't Square's solution, it was the playerbase's. Players demanded a lottery system for years, and they got exactly what they asked for.

The lottery system was never going to solve a supply issue, it just makes it fair for everyone who wants to bid.

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I don't even think it's a supply issue. I think it's everyone wants a select few houses while others fall by the wayside. I went through Shirogane on (I think) Louisoix and the first 4 plots in the subdivision I was in were empty. No buildings, no owners, all of them smalls. You could counter with "well that's only certain servers", but then it comes down to the playerbase migrating to areas that accomodate what they want. My friends gave up raiding at the hours they play to move to a server where houses were more available because to them a house was more important. Choose your priorities.

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Originally Posted by Joven

I don't even think it's a supply issue. I think it's everyone wants a select few houses while others fall by the wayside. I went through Shirogane on (I think) Louisoix and the first 4 plots in the subdivision I was in were empty. No buildings, no owners, all of them smalls. You could counter with "well that's only certain servers", but then it comes down to the playerbase migrating to areas that accomodate what they want. My friends gave up raiding at the hours they play to move to a server where houses were more available because to them a house was more important. Choose your priorities.

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But it literally does depend on data center. As has been said, on Aether the demand far outweighs the supply. It just comes with a high population DC. Like yeah certain plots are more popular for sure, but on a high density server most of them are going to be bid on regardless of location.

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Originally Posted by Zebraoracle

But it literally does depend on data center. As has been said, on Aether the demand far outweighs the supply. It just comes with a high population DC.

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Then, again, transfer to another data center. I, an NA user originally from Aether Cactuar, transfered over to the EU data centers because houses were more prevalent and got a medium in Lavender Beds almost immediately. If they really want one concessions can be made.

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

I think another issue that goes hand in hand with the current system is the developers thoughts on housing itself. They havnt outright said it, but it’s not hard to deduce that they really arnt fans of private housing at all. It seems clear to me that their interpretation is that housing in their eyes is to be used as social hubs for the free companies and they are really hesitant to allow people to go buck wild with private housing.

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..And I think you are right.
I have a private house, but it's -almost- useless.
- I cannot share the house with alts
- I don't have a workshop thus I cannot do submarines or different walls for the house,
- I don't have "chambers" for my subtenants,
- I lose the house if I don't enter for 35 days (no matter if subtenants enter, only the owner resets the demolition),
- I can't decide who enter (or everyone or max 4 characters).


It's a status symbol, nothing more.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

It wasn't Square's solution, it was the playerbase's. Players demanded a lottery system for years, and they got exactly what they asked for.

The lottery system was never going to solve a supply issue, it just makes it fair for everyone who wants to bid.

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Exactly, it’s made people acutely aware of how much demand there is vs supply.

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Originally Posted by Zebraoracle

So legit question, no snark as I am not a game developer and don't know how things work. People have argued that instanced housing for everyone isn't possible due to things like server space, but then they give everyone an island sanctuary.

My brain can't parse this just due to my own ignorance on the subject, someone mind explaining?

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The funny thing is, Island Sanctuary actually proved why instanced housing would be a terrible idea for this game on a technical level without major overhauls in the backend.

When IS was launched, everyone having an instance of it open as people made a mad rush at it completely shut down the instance servers for housing on practically every popular server for days during peak hours since there were linked, preventing the vast majority on those servers from going into their homes. (IS was likely hooked up to the housing server cluster to prevent this issue from taking out the combat duty instance server cluster instead, which would be 10000x worse for Square). The exact same thing happened when EW was released - everyone afking in their apartments with their anti-afk tools to prevent kicks caused housing to become nigh impossible to enter, to the point that between that & difficulties logging into the game, they had to emergency freeze the auto-demo to prevent people's houses from being demo'd when they literally couldn't enter them to cancel the auto-demo.

The game literally cannot support instanced housing in its current setup. if everyone was given their own housing instance, the above issues would become an almost daily occurrence. The wards work in 99% of situations because they're by definition, more limited, and thus on the average, way less housing instances are open at any given time contrasted to if everyone had one. If they released instance housing tomorrow, it'd be in the top 3 biggest disasters in the game's history, and the devs know it. Until they can fix the bigger backend issues such a system will present, instanced housing will never be a valid option.

And speaking as someone with game dev experiences, updating/changing backend stuff that's had years worth of systems built onto it is not a small feat, and an extremely tricky undertaking. With how tight their patch cycle dev times are of only 4 months, it's definitely not something they're going to do when they can't afford any major setbacks at all if something goes bad. If they ever do instanced housing, it'll be made during the X.5 -> expansion development frame since they have way more dev time to afford things going wrong.

As to why they can give everyone their own Island Sanctuary? Simple, because with the way its setup, you're there for maybe 10mins a day at best, and if you try to afk there, it kicks you out. Outside of launch days where there's new content for it, there isn't any risk of IS instances clogging up the cluster drains, since players either close them manually by leaving, or the game purges them regularly with afk kicks. A vastly different story for housing where people love to afk, craft in their homes, etc, keeping open instances not doing anything/barely doing anything clogging the drains way more a potential issue. I have zero doubts if they ever added instanced housing to the current game state, they'd have to put an insanely hard afk timer on it, like 10mins, and implement systems that can bypass anti-afk tools and kick you out anyway. Or even worse, make a queueing system for it then only give you a small amount of time to hang out inside your house before it auto-kicks you out, either of which would no doubt illicit 'BuT wHy Is It LiKe ThIs' complaints.

Then there's also other issues to talk about, like the fact that with the way they have things coded, you literally cannot teleport to a location unless its a persistently loaded location (the exact reason you cannot warp to IS, because a player's instance is only loaded when they enter it) which would mean instanced housing would require you to do similar to IS and require you to go talk to some NPC/object to access it which would no doubt draw ire from people complaining about things they have no technical knowledge on.

As a former game programmer, I don't envy Yoshi-P's team. A bad decision made when they expected the game would only get maybe one expansion before shutting down is biting them immensely hard a near decade later, and trying to give a technical explanation on why it would take a long time / why they want to stick to the ward system would just go in one ear and out the other for 99% of their players who have zero server environment experience, or make 'but this MMO did it' false equivalence fallacies without understanding the technical aspects of FF14's server architecture & code foundation.

Reading your inputs on it, I had a feeling the technical debt of the engine would have some reason for why they shy away from the instanced housing idea. I still sucks though at the end of the day since other older MMOs are capable of it but FFXIV's engine really is such a technical marvel of a mess.

People have suggested the next best thing would be to allow us to expand our apartment space to at least allow the basic housing functions such as gardening available for the rest of the playerbase. That still can be possible?

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Originally Posted by MintberriCrunch

Title says it all, I'd rather go back to fighting bots at the placard for hours at a time because at least my dedication eventually got me a house. Square's solution to the bot problem being "lets just make it randomm!!xD" has to be the absolute laziest solution to a problem I've ever seen in a game.

I might have been okay with this stupidly lazy fix if it only applied to the dime a dozen small houses, but Medium and Large plots are some of the rarest and most sought after items in the game. Its insane to me that a some person who just hit level 50 and ground out a moot amount of gold has the same chance at getting one of these plots as a mentor with 50x more sub time and time played.

The very least they could do is increase the amount of money these plots cost (at least double) and require you to complete the Endwalker MSQ and possibly more. This would cut down on the amount of bids people with multiple alt characters and/or multiple accounts are putting in each buy period, as I personally know many people with 2+ houses that are putting in 3+ bids on MORE plots each buy period because of the loose restrictions.

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It was a good idea!

no one truly knows what is and isn't possible unless you work for SE .

However!.....I think the MULTI-BILLION company can swing instanced housing if they actually tried.

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Originally Posted by Joven

Then, again, transfer to another data center. I, an NA user originally from Aether Cactuar, transfered over to the EU data centers because houses were more prevalent and got a medium in Lavender Beds almost immediately. If they really want one concessions can be made.

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So choose between getting a house and playing with my friends? You realize how unhinged that is right? Or even the ping issues from being in a foreign DC?

And even within same region, having to leave a FC *with your friends*, spend *real money* to transfer, for a *chance* at a house? That's not a solution, that's another problem!

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Originally Posted by MistyMew

However!.....I think the MULTI-BILLION company can swing instanced housing if they actually tried.

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Le gasp! How dare you expect multi dollar company who can barely keep the lights on to implement instanced housing! /s

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Originally Posted by MistyMew

no one truly knows what is and isn't possible unless you work for SE .

However!.....I think the MULTI-BILLION company can swing instanced housing if they actually tried.

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They honestly probably can, but it wouldnt be profitable to put the game all hands on deck to do so. Its only if somehow it was an absolute necessity will they pool their resources to implement the feature.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

They honestly probably can, but it wouldnt be profitable to put the game all hands on deck to do so. Its only if somehow it was an absolute necessity will they pool their resources to implement the feature.

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Unfortunately true. SE doesn't exactly have a customer friendly track record.

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

The funny thing is, Island Sanctuary actually proved why instanced housing would be a terrible idea for this game on a technical level.

-snip-

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This an excellent and accurate post that will unfortunately go in one ear and out the other for most. I am so tired of seeing "JuSt Do InStAnCeD HoUsInG" posts from people who have absolutely no perspective on what that would entail.

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Originally Posted by MistyMew

.....I think the MULTI-BILLION company can swing instanced housing if they actually tried.

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Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44

Le gasp! How dare you expect multi dollar company who can barely keep the lights on to implement instanced housing! /s

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Unfortunately "durrrr throw money at it" isn't an actual solution to technical problems.

btw its childish to think that "having more money" means that games would be perfect. Unless you were living under a rock thats been clearly not the case for a majority of today's games.

i dont think a majority of the users who post here understand what “instanced” means

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Originally Posted by Vandrak

EQ2 has always had instances and came out the same time as wow. You can have unlimited items basically in your housing instance. My wife built a castle from the ground up. You didn't get a plot/instance with a house. You could get an instance based on a certain zone and build every wall, floor, roof, etc of your house, and fill it with whatever you could place down. Not to mention you could right click and preview paintings and furniture right from the broker. As old as EQ2 is, and with no limitations on instanced housing, it would work here too.

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If the servers weren't made for that, it'd take a lot more work to rework everything and would need an entire overhaul of the system, it wouldn't be something they could do in a week on top of everything else for patches + xpac + graphical update. Finite dev time + finite devs makes this incredibly difficult for something that they didn't intend in the first place to code.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

Unfortunately "durrrr throw money at it" isn't an actual solution to technical problems.

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Considering they wanted to add more DCs during ShB and they even said "we tried throwing money at new servers and they just didn't have them," money is indeed not the answer to this. Their main focus is making sure people can actually play first, as that will always be Priority 1, and as I recall they've said they want to expand housing servers once they're done expanding DCs and additional servers. It'll take time and I know no one wants to hear that it's going to take time, but the need to actually secure things needs to happen first before they can do anything more. At the very least I would love for them to rewrite enough code to compartmentalize housing items filesizes to open a couple more wards each patch, but I don't know how feasible that is.

I dunno. Back when i bought my medium house, the Server i play on was pretty empty. I just walked up to the house i wanted and bought it. Done.
Back then there was enough houses for everybody who could afford it but they failed to keep up with the rising demand.

Either give instanced housing or give enough wards. That simple tbh.

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Originally Posted by Araxes

I dunno. Back when i bought my medium house, the Server i play on was pretty empty. I just walked up to the house i wanted and bought it. Done.
Back then there was enough houses for everybody who could afford it but they failed to keep up with the rising demand.

Either give instanced housing or give enough wards. That simple tbh.

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Never really had issues in SB getting my small, the same goes for any of my friends. I feel the housing issue started in ShB when a huge flood of ppl started playing the game and they really didn't do much with housing in response. I honestly can't remember if they added any new wards in Shb. They may have added maybe 5 wards then? Im not really sure since I can't remember correctly.

Really feels like housing has become this resource black hole for the devs lol

I wonder if they regret adding it in the first place

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Originally Posted by MrJPtheAssassin

Never really had issues in SB getting my small, the same goes for any of my friends. I feel the housing issue started in ShB when a huge flood of ppl started playing the game and they really didn't do much with housing in response. I honestly can't remember if they added any new wards in Shb. They may have added maybe 5 wards then? Im not really sure since I can't remember correctly.

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Well part of the problem is also what players want. Notice the person you replied to said Medium, not Small.

Even right now, there are a bunch of Smalls that weren't sold in the first round because no one bid on them. Many had 3, 2, or even 0 bidders. I bid on one with 0 (first time I ever tried buying a house and I found the slots people weren't bidding on and didn't seem to want and where across the wards there were several versions of that plot that no one was bidding on, meaning it wasn't in high demand) and won since I was the only bidder.

There seem to be enough SMALLS to go around. People just want mansions and think housing is broken when they can't have one. They say they can't get a house, but what they mean is they can't get a Large (or in some cases, a Medium), not that they can't get a house (Small included - Smalls can have gardens and the other stuff players say they want that an Apartment can't do) or have no where to live/put their (indoor) housing items (Apartments and FC chambers both can do that)

I think my favorite was just clicking to buy without the purchase timer. Even with people buying to resell, it felt better to me even on my congested server.

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Originally Posted by Zebraoracle

So choose between getting a house and playing with my friends? You realize how unhinged that is right? Or even the ping issues from being in a foreign DC?

And even within same region, having to leave a FC *with your friends*, spend *real money* to transfer, for a *chance* at a house? That's not a solution, that's another problem!

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So someone offers you a suggested workaround you call them "unhinged"? Ok. And I wasn't referring to you specifically. Other people who are less attached to their data center might see it as an opportunity. Just because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean it can't work for someone else.

You aren't owed a house simply for having a subscription. From this level of reply you're not looking for a solution, you just want a gimme.

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Originally Posted by hobostew

Really feels like housing has become this resource black hole for the devs lol

I wonder if they regret adding it in the first place

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At this point just nuke the whole system. Either allow the feature to be accessible to all players or dont have it at all.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Well part of the problem is also what players want. Notice the person you replied to said Medium, not Small.

Even right now, there are a bunch of Smalls that weren't sold in the first round because no one bid on them. Many had 3, 2, or even 0 bidders. I bid on one with 0 (first time I ever tried buying a house and I found the slots people weren't bidding on and didn't seem to want and where across the wards there were several versions of that plot that no one was bidding on, meaning it wasn't in high demand) and won since I was the only bidder.

There seem to be enough SMALLS to go around. People just want mansions and think housing is broken when they can't have one. They say they can't get a house, but what they mean is they can't get a Large (or in some cases, a Medium), not that they can't get a house (Small included - Smalls can have gardens and the other stuff players say they want that an Apartment can't do) or have no where to live/put their (indoor) housing items (Apartments and FC chambers both can do that)

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As said before that is server based. On high-pop servers like mine and most of aether even small dry up very quickly. Stop comparing your server to others since yours may not be as high pop as mine or other servers. I can bet you right now there be very lil smalls on Jenova in the next lottery. Also, ppl can be picky if they want since all housing areas are not created equally. I don't know anyone who likes the goblet and the ones who are in the goblet want out badly including myself. I told my story a lot in this thread so I'm not repeating it again but I just say I have a large that I really hate for a lot of reasons now and I want to leave it badly. I'm even going to downgrade to a med if I can win one in a better housing area(which means any housing area that is NOT the goblet). If you are in a area you really hate its hard to enjoy a house so I don't blame ppl who are picky. Maybe they need to update the goblet design and actually make it look nicer and not a brown turd.

Having gotten a small with the old system losing it because I was in the hospital for a year. Getting a 2nd one with the old system.
Moving this time to a medium house, this time was way better.

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Originally Posted by hobostew

Really feels like housing has become this resource black hole for the devs lol

I wonder if they regret adding it in the first place

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I would hope their regret would be making a system that had no future-proofing at all, though I imagine a lot of that came from not expecting anywhere near the growth that they have had.

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Originally Posted by Amenara

I would hope their regret would be making a system that had no future-proofing at all, though I imagine a lot of that came from not expecting anywhere near the growth that they have had.

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That's the thing. I don't think the devs at all even dreamed that their game could reach these numbers.

They made a game to compete against WoW. But they were expecting to just be kept afloat, around numbers that would make their game appear "successful". You know, at least in stark contrast to 1.0, in a genre that was kinda dying for a while. Even at its relative heights before the boom in popularity from SB and beyond, they were counting themselves alongside games like GW2 or PSO2.

Suddenly, this game became all the rage. It not only crashed the servers so hard that instances died on Stormblood, it led to sales being suspended in late Shadowbringers. The massive exodus waves from World of Warcraft made people experiment with the game and come to enjoy it. No one expected WoW to crash as hard as it did, and certainly no one expected FF14 to grow as much as it did because of it.

But here's the rub.

Even before, we had issues with supply. Sure, it was just "a matter of time" until you had a house*, but... it certainly wasn't this bad. Then the influx came, and they needed to put in restrictions and systems to try and alleviate things, like relocation or the 1-house limit. And it just... didn't work as great as they wanted it to. And now we have this. It doesn't matter what system you're in. If you can't solve the supply numbers, your systems will always generate salt.

*of course it's not as clear-cut anyway because some people bought ENTIRE DISTRICTS worth of houses at the time... so that's just a matter of speaking really.

Yeah, agreed. Stated this when they first announced the change that it would be worse overall for everyone. Looks like some are realizing the truth. Was placard spamming fun? No but it was better than this.

(BTW I have two mansions so I have no horse in this race either way but I do care about my friends that don't have a house yet)

Like there is no other better system, you can fix the FC stack bid by only allowing the FC leader to bid per plot.

The other options would be what? Actual gil bid? It would be a glorious circus to watch, see people bidding max gil cap for small plots but it would be a disaster for the community and the game image.
And the other was rolling back to the previous system where everyone already vented their frustrations with.

The actual fix would require SE to stop doing stupid investments in NFTs and flopped Live Service Games and actually assembling a team to update the engine in a state where it isn't a damn nightmare to work with and be able to introduce features where it won't cause a datacenter crash and be able to compete with the current MMOs in the market. But for this one its easier to win the lottery bid instead of waiting their ceo to remove his head from the place where the sun don't shine.

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Originally Posted by Xuled

Yeah, agreed. Stated this when they first announced the change that it would be worse overall for everyone. Looks like some are realizing the truth. Was placard spamming fun? No but it was better than this.

(BTW I have two mansions so I have no horse in this race either way but I do care about my friends that don't have a house yet)

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Hard disagree, I would rather go bid on something then go play the game instead of sitting at a placard for hours to have a relocator pop in and take it from me or leave to go to the restroom and have someone else win the plot while I was gone. It was a toxic system that almost incentivized people to bot and should never come back.

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Originally Posted by Amenara

Hard disagree, I would rather go bid on something then go play the game instead of sitting at a placard for hours to have a relocator pop in and take it from me or leave to go to the restroom and have someone else win the plot while I was gone. It was a toxic system that almost incentivized people to bot and should never come back.

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People who keep saying the older system was better literally have turned off their brains and lost any form of sanity. Where were they when people kept complaining how bs the placard system was for how stupid and unfair it is.

Face it, lottery system is equal and fair for all parties involved. But it was never going to solve the housing system. If youre going to criticize the housing system, criticize the limited plots, not the method of acquirement for them which is objectively better.

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Originally Posted by Xuled

Yeah, agreed. Stated this when they first announced the change that it would be worse overall for everyone. Looks like some are realizing the truth. Was placard spamming fun? No but it was better than this.

(BTW I have two mansions so I have no horse in this race either way but I do care about my friends that don't have a house yet)

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Nope. You can plan ahead with the lottery, scouting out locations and which houses have the fewest bids. By waiting until near the deadline, you can find the best odds of getting a house. You also don't have to fight against bots.

Limited lots were an unfortunate decision, but it's clear there's nothing more to be done but try to find space. We're well past half a million houses across the worlds. There's no converting anything to purely instanced because there's no way to guarantee anything wouldn't go wrong, so we're stuck with things as they are.

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Originally Posted by Poporito_Popoto

Nope. You can plan ahead with the lottery, scouting out locations and which houses have the fewest bids. By waiting until near the deadline, you can find the best odds of getting a house. You also don't have to fight against bots.

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This ^ We have empty lots in the new wards because people tended to favor a location over trying to scout any old spot.

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Originally Posted by MrJPtheAssassin

I don't know anyone who likes the goblet and the ones who are in the goblet want out badly including myself.

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I specifically chose the Goblet because I liked the area down in Brimming Heart more than the other areas. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I have the small right next to the waterfall, and love it. I'm not a fan of Lav Beds, and my FC house is in Mist. I have no interest in Snow Hell or Weeb City. Unless they introduce an area I care about for housing (Sharlayan would be one) and would like the designs of the base houses, I don't see myself wanting to move or get out. There's not really much you can do with a desert clime either to make it "prettier," and I say this as someone who lives about an hour away from the non-developed desert in my state: the Goblet/Thanalan looks exactly like the desert outside of the developed cities near my own home. (...maybe that's why I enjoy the area, reminds me of home lmao)

So, now you know one person who likes the Goblet and doesn't want to move. :P

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Originally Posted by MrJPtheAssassin

As said before that is server based.

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Oh, this is absolutely true, though so you know, my server is a high pop one. I'm not sitting on Materia or...Dynamis...? Whatever the new DATAcenter is. I'm on Primal on a pretty full server, all the houses were sold out before the expansion, etc etc. I'm just pointing out a lot of issue comes from people having something available, just not what they want.

Also: Goblet is one of the better cities. Most people I know want to move TO the Goblet. I honestly don't get why people like Mist as it's my least favorite of the OG housing areas. The only one I like less is Ishgard, mostly because I hate snow and ice and cold and it has all three. XD

People can be picky. I never said people couldn't be.

But just like irl, if you're too picky, sometimes you go to bed without supper. That's kind of how life...works. I guess I'm "fortunate" in that I'm the type of person that isn't too terribly particular and am contented easily. I just get slightly annoyed when people say "I can't get a house" but mean "I can't get a LARGE house." There's a pretty big distinction irl between someone saying "I can't get a trailer house on a quarter acre plot" and "I can't get that 27 bedroom mansion I've been eyeing", and I see it the same way in-game. Not EVERYone, but quite a few people, are complaining because they want a specific location or the larger sized houses, not because they bid on a small in an open plot that no one really cared for and lost it. There are a few, but most are not that.

I can't imagine being a person so into housing that not having an in-game house is make or break...but then, despite having a Large, hating it and wanting to give it up for something else (not to give it up outright, ONLY if they can get something else), where said something else is AT LEAST A MEDIUM in another area.

I mean, be picky, by all means...but I can't wrap my brain around that one...

EDIT:

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Originally Posted by rainichan

(...maybe that's why I enjoy the area, reminds me of home lmao)

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I think this is me with Gridania. Where I live is a bit less forest and a bit more interface between the piney woods of the South and the grasslands of the prairie that then transitions into desert in the western half of my state here (and south into Mexico, obviously), but since there isn't really a piney woods/grassland housing area (we coastal bluffs in Limsa, desert in Ul'Dah, tropical coast in Kugane, and frozen tundra in Scandinavia Ishgard, so Gridania is "close enough"), and it was my starting city as a CNJ in 2014, so I guess I have a fondness for it.

If I had started as an Arcanist instead, I'd probably have done the same thing just in the Goblet. Reminds me of where I grew up on the border and driving out into west Texas some, so I'd be fine with that as well, honestly. I like both in about equal measure.

...though if they ever made an Azem Steppe housing, I'd be all over that. Well, I WOULD be...except I suspect everyone else would as well, lol Beautiful sweeping open plain and hill country. I've always loved that kind of land, even if I've only seen pictures of Kansas/Nebraska type areas. Mulgore and Nagarnd in WoW were two of my favorite areas for basically that reason as well (well, and Negrand because it just seemed so mystical and mysterious beautiful AS WELL AS aesthetically so.)

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Originally Posted by Xuled

Yeah, agreed. Stated this when they first announced the change that it would be worse overall for everyone. Looks like some are realizing the truth. Was placard spamming fun? No but it was better than this.

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Respectfully: Hard disagree.

Placard spamming was WAY worse than this.